The starting point for the history of the Zaporizhzhia plant was the adoption of the Plan of Economic Development for the USSR Republics in the early 1970s. The document was set to solve the problem of the acute shortage of beer in the country. The Plan included the construction of about 22 beer brewing plants with the annual output capacity of 45—60 million liters of beer each. The construction of one of the first brewing plants according to a novel design by Czech engineers, started in 1971, with a record capacity for that time of 72 million liters of beer a year. Czech professionals were supervising the installation and checkout of equipment, as well as trained their Ukrainian colleagues to operate it. On December 12, 1974, the personnel of the Zaporizhzhia Beer Plant No. 2 made their first brew, and the first batch of beer was bottled on January 15, 1975. The new product was gaining popularity at a fast speed.
In 1976, the plant joined the Zaporizhzhia Industrial Association of Beer and Soft Drink Producers, which then was in operation until 1984. In 1986, the history of the plant saw the start of a campaign to fight alcohol addiction. Back in those years, sales quotas were introduced for the product, so this led to a significant drop in production output. For a while, beer had been in short supply. The years of Perestroika were also tough on the plant, with the economic crisis of the late 1980s worsening the matter. Ukraine was suffering from the collapse of the financial and payment systems, as well as from the disruption of economic links with the Soviet republics. However, despite all the challenges, the production was running virtually non-stop.
BOTTLE 50 CL. Clear yellow golden, white creamy head. Cheap lager aroma of some generic sweetness, sulphites, sweat and solvent. Taste is light sweet and dry alcoholic, no proper malts and hops, just a harsh alcoholic, slightly salty and astringent finish. Crap.
BOTTLE 50 CL. Pale straw, white frothy head. The aroma is more or less nice - some pale malts, grassy, a touch of sulfur and some alcohol when it warms up. The taste is much worse - again, pale malt sweetness, followed by fusel alcohols, some astringency, nop proper hops - just a hint of alcoholic bitterness in the finish. Pretty crappy.
Bottle. Pale yellow golden color with a white head. Aroma of cereals and some hay. Pretty sweet flavor with grains, corn and a very faint bitterness in the finish. Light-bodied. Too sweet, quite unpleasant.
Bottle. Gold with a white head. Grainy aroma with some floral, spicy and metallic notes. Pleasantly soft mouthfeel, but unfortunately a bit watery. _Some_ bready malt though and decent hops apart from a little metal. OK old fashioned Eastern European glugging lager.
500ml bottle, provided by Gaute. White foamy head reduced to a remaining layer. Lacing rings down the glass. Bright dark golden body. Overly malty on the nose. Flavours of grainy malts with dry lemony hints beneath . A bit of sour grassy hops to the ending. Clean and soft in the mouth. Quite possible to finish the bottle (Tromsø, 18.10.2013).
An example of East European cheater-beer. It has no style at all. Weird lots of caramel malt & diacetyl. Oh come on! Everything is wrong. No taste, no aroma. No beer to me.